April 2015

04/24/2015

When I was exclusively a knitter but hadn't started spinning at this time, I loved superwash merino. I knew I should always treat my knitted items gently when washing, but I liked the fact that I could wash superwash items in the washing machine. When I started spinning and then became an indie dyer, I loved superwash wools because of how well they absorbed professional acid dyes. You can get some amazing bright and vivid colors on superwash wools. In today's market, I'm finding more and more wool breeds being offered as superwash.

But what is it exactly? What process does wool go through to become superwash? Each hair of wool is made up of scales. Felting occurs when these scales bind together. Unless you're purposely felting the wool or the wool breed itself is not prone to felting, you should not wash wool in a machine.

Superwash wool is created in a surprisingly toxic way. There are several different processes that can be used to make superwash wool, but all of them start with its chlorination by caustic chlorine-based chemicals. These chemicals can cause burns and can easily produce deadly chlorine gas.

The hypochlorite often used to chlorinate Superwash wool is similar to the active ingredient in household bleach, but it is more dangerous because it is unstable under the acidic conditions used. The sodium hydroxide (caustic soda or lye) that is normally added to household bleach keeps the pH high so that chlorine gas will not be produced, which makes it safer to use. However, the high pH of sodium hydroxide would destroy wool. Wool is very sensitive to high pH and does best if kept at mildly to moderately acid conditions. This is why we don't normally dye wool in the presence of soda ash, which is widely used to dye cotton and other plant base fibers; although wool takes fiber reactive dyes very well when dyed with soda ash as the auxiliary chemical, the amount of damage can be considerable, if you're not careful.

After the wool is chlorinated, it is washed and the chlorine is neutralized, after which a patented synthetic resin coating is applied, essentially gluing down the scales that would otherwise interact under the mechanical stress of washing to produce felting.

It is surprising that, after all of the chemical changes produced in wool by the superwash process, the wool remains very easy to dye. In my opinion it may not be entirely correct to refer to superwash wool as a natural fiber. After learning what happens to make wool superwash. I stopped purchasing it in bulk. I am guilty of buying the occasional dyed braid if the colors especially irresistible, but I usually don't enjoy spinning it.

I'm not completely anti supewash but I'm not a big fan of it either. I don't purposely buy it, but it's really hard to avoid. Most commercial yarn is superwash now-a-days. Being a wool processor, I prefer to keep wool as is.

With all that being said. I think it's best to be aware of what superwash is, there's nothing wrong with being an informed buyer. It's good to be able to make an educated decision.

04/20/2015

First off what is "true worsted"? According to PLY Magazine, an article written by Beth Smith states, a true worsted yarn is "...always hand-combed, with all of the fibers aligned and all of the butts (cut end that was attached to the sheep) and tips (the end that was facing the sun) of each individual fiber facing the same way." It goes on to say that spinning your yarn with the butt end first will make a smoother denser yarn, which means clean stitch definition and less pilling.

So how do we prepare a fleece for a "true worsted" yarn? Remember we have to keep all the fibers aligned in the same direction. This means we have to keep the locks in tact when we wash the fleece. Not every fleece you run across will be well suited for trued worsted yarn. It really does depend on how it's sheared and packaged in my opinion. I have here a beautiful natural colored corriedale fleece. It was carefully sheared and the locks are perfect for this type of yarn. I can basically just pull them in nice clean chunks. The tip of this fleece is closest to my thumb and the butt end is closest to my pinky finger.

The entire fleece was sorted and the locks were all laid out in the same direction in a big plastic tub. I just sat and listened to an audio book. Or you could watch a movie or listen to music. I think it took me about an hour to sort through a pound of fleece. You see all the locks are nice and defined. I had another small pile of fleece left over that was not in lock formation.

I buy these rolls of tulle from Hobby Lobby when they go on sale. They're awesome for making mesh pouches to wash my fleece with. I just unroll it and lay my locks on top then fold the tulle over and staple it closed. You could also stitch it closed with a quick running stitch going all the way around. You see below I've put them all in their pouches ready to be washed. I didn't stuff them too full. Wool needs a little space to get clean.

Now I wash the fleece just as described in my article Washing Joe's Fleece. The extra pile of fleece that I had left over from washing gets thrown in a small mesh bag and it's thrown in the same sink with all the rest of the wool, it's hard to see from the photos below.

Once it's nice and dry, I start combing. You see in the photo below, the bag of loose fleece left over from sorting. I actually combed that first and set it aside to be spun separately.

Now I'm combing the locks, I'm using a hackle comb set I bought from Moonsong Fiberworks on etsy, It's their extra fine set. I'm only using one side of the hackle that's the same width as the comb. You could use the whole hackle, yes, but I find that I'm much more thorough working with a small amount at a time. I use the entire hackle for other projects which I will show at a later time on another article.

What does combing do? It removes vm (no need for picking!). It gets rid of shorter staples, second cuts and neps/noils. It aligns the fibers in one clean direction. It's a beautiful thing! Now it's time to diz the fiber off the hackle. I loosely wrap mine around my hand into cute little fiber nests.

When I wrap my nests, I wrap them so that the cut end is what I will start spinning with. It's hard to see since the fleece is so dark. I ended up with 50 fiber nests in this drawer. It was so pretty!

I spun the yarn butt end to tip. I decided I wanted a sport weight yarn. This is for a sweater I plan on knitting with this. I'll talk soon about how to spin the exact yarn weight you want. That's a full article in itself. LOL.

* A note about combing- I find that when I comb from locks, I get much less waste as opposed to loose fibers....unless, you're really careful about how you load your loose fibers onto your combs. If you can keep the lock structure in tact...try to. It's worth the extra effort. Less waste and a beautiful "true worsted" yarn.

If there's any questions...please post them below in the comments! Thanks so much for stopping by!

04/16/2015

My Facebook friend Joe Cole of What The Flock asked me to clean his gorgeous 16 micron merino and I thought I'd share what I'm doing with everyone. It's a beautiful fleece. Soft and springy and quite white in color too. I'm not actually processing his portion, only washing it for him, but he let me have some too so I'll be processing my portion at a later date.

The overall staple length seems to be around 2 inches. If you look at the photo, you'll see it doesn't have a nice defined lock structure. So this fleece won't be washed to keep lock structure in tact. The tips are fairly dirty which you will see in other photos, but there's little to no vegetable matter (vm). What I decided to do is separate the fleece into several large mesh bags. I want the bags to have lots of space for the wool to move around. It will get nice and clean that way. I have a large utility sink in my garage that I like to wash my fleece in so please excuse the not so pretty pictures. LOL.

I made the water as hot as it will go and filled the sink 3/4 full. I'm washing one bag at a time. Then I'm using my 3 favorite tried and true products to get my fleece clean. Kookabura scour, Dawn Dish Detergent, and Borax. This is all I use on every single fleece I wash. It works for me, even on gross filthy disgusting fleeces.

I fill the sink with water first. Then I add my 3 cleaners. I don't want lots of bubbles, that just makes it harder to clean up afterwards. The bubbles aren't necessary, you just need the cleaning power of these products. Once I add all 3, I stick my arm in (I'm wearing heavy duty rubber gloves that go past my elbows to keep from scalding myself), and slowly swirl the products around to incorporate it into the water. Then I slowly submerge my bag of fleece into the water. I like to leave mine between 20-30 min. Sometimes a bit longer if it's really a dirty or greasy fleece. This is merino, which is usually pretty greasy. I left the bag in for about 30 min or so.

When I remove the bag, I simply drape my arms underneath the bag in the water, and lift up, no squeezing or agitation happens. I hold the bag there over the water to let most of the water drain out. I'm not worried about squeezing. Not a good idea. While a little squeezing wont hurt it much, it will prevent it from fully submerging back into the water for your subsequent washes and rinse baths. I learned this the hard way. When you wash fine super springy crimpy fleeces like merino, cormo, cvm etc, squeezing the water out causes them to float on top of the water after the first bath and you can't get them as clean...so let it drip and just place it to the side while you make your subsequent baths and rinses. I don't have this issue with coarser fleeces and long wools but I don't take the chance. I did 2 washes with this fleece. You may need to do more, just depends on the fleece.

The rinses are really easy, it's just the same thing as the wash baths but with no soap or borax. I simply fill the sink with hot water and add the wool back in, again leaving it for about 20-30 min. I always do at least 2 rinses, usually that's all I need but sometimes you may need more. Again with fine fleeces like merino, cormo etc, I like to add a dollop of hair conditioner to the next to the last rinse. I do this to help prevent them from drying out too much and getting lots of static when it's time to process them on my wool combs/ hand carders, or drum carder. With this fleece I did 2 rinses. The first with conditioner, the second without. Any conditioner will do. It can be something generic.

After I'm done washing and rinsing, I place the first bag to the side to cool down and I repeat the process with the rest of the bags of fleece, till they're all clean. After they've all cooled down, I put all the bags in my washing machine on the spin cycle and drain out all of the water I can. It does NOT felt the wool, the wool was allowed to cool all the way down and the spinning makes the bags stay it place so not agitation is happening. Then I remove the wool from the bags and place it on my drying rack. You'll see in the photo that the tips are still a little dirty but not worries! We'll take care of that next.

Now it's time to clean the tips and to fluff this into clouds for Joe. I'm going to do this over a few days, I want to take my time and make sure I get it nice and clean. I have 3 tools that I use for cleaning tips. A flicker brush, a dog brush and a dog comb. I usually use either the comb or the flicker brush. The brush makes the fleece fluffier than the comb so I'm using that one since I want this fluffed into clouds anyways. All I do is grab a small hand full of wool from my pile of fluff and pull on the crusty parts so I can see them cleanly and then bush the debris out with my flicker brush. This is a slow process so you can't mind it taking time. Just sit on the floor and watch movies. After I've flicked out all of the debris, I use my hands and pull the wool apart several times and fluff it into a big puffy cloud. Fluffing it into clouds will also help remove any vm that may be in the fleece. It probably wont remove all of it but it removes most of it if you're thorough. Then I add it to the plastic bucket sitting next to me and grab another hand full and do it again and again till I'm all done. You can spin directly from clouds, it's loads of fun! You can also card or comb from clouds so you have options! This is what I'm currently doing as I type this out for you so I don't have a finished photo of all the fiber just yet. I'll make sure to post a pic when I'm done before I send this back to Joe.

Tools of the trade

Flicking the tips.

Clean of debris. Do this to the entire fleece.

Fluffy clean cloud

If you're feeling overwhelmed or think that this is something you may not be able to do, keep in mind, I washed a few pounds here. You can go much smaller scale. The average skein of yarn is 4 oz. You will have weight lost from the removal of grease, dirt and vm, then if you decide to comb your fleece, you'll have a bit more loss as opposed to carding. I would suggest, washing about 6-8 oz at a time, that way you have plenty to work with. You don't have to have a giant sink for 8 oz of wool. You can do that it a smaller sink or even a plastic tub. You can save your dirty water and pour it on your plants. They'll love it!

If you have any questions at all, please post them below in the comments section. I'll do my absolute best to answer them in a timely manner.

As a relatively productive spinner, meaning I make lots of yarn, I've been told a few times that I should sell my yarn. I've had this discussion with myself many times over. I've built a big cartel website and put my babies up for sale. There's a few problems with this.

* Spinning yarn takes time. Especially when you process it from a raw fleece like I do. Lets say I make a skein of yarn that takes me a week from start to finish. About 5 hours a day over 6 days. This means washing the fleece, dyeing the cleaned locks 4 colors, combing those locks into a heathered combed top, then spinning those locks into a fingering weight yarn, navajo 3 ply. Please take a look at the photos to get a glimpse at the process.

* Lets say I try to pay myself minimum wage for said yarn so around 8 bucks an hour. So that's $8 dollars times 30 hours total... That would be $240 dollars. I love yarn but not even I would pay that much for a hank of yarn. There's no way.

You have to sell your yarn at a competitive price or you won't sell anything. But how do you do that when you have people who are willing to price their items so low just to make a few bucks? I'm not a person who believes in undervaluing my work. I know what it's worth. So I had to make the choice to stop selling my yarn. It's not worth it.

Let's say I decided to sell that same yarn mentioned above for $5 and hour? That's still $150. Doesn't work for me. I'd rather use my time to make yarn that I love and will use and cherish and show others how to do the same thing.

Hence the new premise of my very neglected blog. I'll be taking my sharing on FB and Instagram and putting all of my processes in one place for anyone who wants to learn about processing fiber and spinning. I'll still continue to share on FB and IG but you can come here and see everything explained in detail with more images and videos.

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My name is Bren. I'm a hard core spinner and knitter who processes most of my yarn from raw fleece sheared straight off the animal. I also dabble with crochet and I love cooking and making cold processed soap and other bath and body goodies. Come hang out with me and hopefully get inspired!